Tourists get rental car stuck on wall in Napier street

A tourist photo op ends in police and the fire service being called to help extricate this car in Napier. Photo/Duncan Brown

The popular tourist pursuit of photographing buildings in Art Deco capital Napier turned into a late-morning drama for visitors from New Caledonia today.

Their near-new rental vehicle ran off a hillside driveway and became stranded on a retaining wall.

Fire and Emergency New Zealand was called at 10.44am to help after the vehicle was driven on to a layby outside a block of stilted flats off Milton Rd, about 200m from Tennyson St, as the tourists claimed a vantage point to photograph an old house.

The driver misjudged the exit and the vehicle became stranded on the concrete edge, its left front wheel on the footpath and its right rear wheel up to a metre in the air.

Firefighters and a tow-truck driver used a combination of pulley theory and bodyweight to lower the right the vehicle so it could be driven out of the predicament, mission accomplished by just after 11.20am.

A police officer at the scene noted the embarrassment of the driver, with advice that driving on to private property to take photographs was not really the done thing in New Zealand, and it could come with difficulties.